IIeX (Innovation Insight Exchange) is an annual market research event to exchange innovative methods, approaches and ideas for consumer and market insights. I attended this year's NA IIeX event in Atlanta last month and wanted to share some of what I learned. The mind map below captures some of the key themes I experienced during the event with more details on my three biggest insights below. 1. Empathy & Human Insights: it's no coincidence that this theme appears in the center of the map above--it was not only woven throughout the conference, but human insights are also the starting place for all innovation. It would be easy to write "empathy" off as a buzzword or flavor of the month, but to me, it's just the logical evolution of customer-centricity. How can you design a great product or service for someone without understanding what's important to them and what they value? The idea of "human insights" recognizes that each of us is more than buyer, more than a user, and frankly, probably doesn't spend nearly as much time thinking about your category as you wish. It's about relating to another person as just that, a person--and by understanding their lives more completely, it can lead to more compelling messaging, more delightful products and services, and a brand connection that endures. Driving the point home, Jim Chastain from RealityCheck Consulting commented, "Brands create more growth and loyalty when they solve 'life tensions' vs. 'category issues'." 2. Data Visualization & Storytelling: let's face it, the way we communicate insights has to change, is changing, and will continue to change. The neuroscience on storytelling is well-documented: if you want something to stick, tell a story; if you want to provoke action, tell a story. I think we're honestly all still figuring this out when it comes to consumer research, but let's start in simple ways--instead of a "consumer profile" with bullet points of data in a report, let's give voice to a specific person and tell a narrative of his/her life and how our products support or enable him/her. Burke Research suggested selecting from a range of creative reporting approaches, including: apps, quizzes, magazines, newsletters, videos, storyboards and even live shows. We may not all be graphic designers (exhibit A: my mindmap above) or professional authors or have a degree in anthropology, but we can all think differently about designing research and presenting results using visual thinking and stories. Again, simple examples--instead of asking why someone likes a certain kind of cookie, ask them for their favorite memories that involve the cookie; or, instead of slide after slide of data tables (that's what appendices are for!), how can we weave the most critical information into an at-a-glance infographic that becomes an invaluable reference for the future. I'm not saying it's easy, but it is a skill that must be developed. Check out "The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam for some great tips on visual thinking. 3. The Marriage of Big and "Little" Data: talk about a buzzword--my eyes seriously start to glaze over when I see "big data" in a headline these days, but what I am interested in is the synergy between so-called big data and other, more traditional sources of consumer research, like survey tools. At IIeX, Google talked about the concept of machine learning and how they use survey data to "train" their algorithms and the Psychometric Centre at the University of Cambridge showed that "digital footprints" (e.g. what you "like" on Facebook) can more accurately predict personality than humans! I've been interested in using unstructured/social data as a source for consumer insight for a while now, but some of these presentations were incredible. Off the bat, there seem to be obvious applications for extremely targeted recruiting for research via social media/search and I'm sure Google Consumer Surveys will offer even more integration in the future between their big data and respondent survey results on the back end. It's a very cool new frontier in the arena of behavioral research to be sure!
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I once worked in an organization headed by someone who wasn’t very supportive of what he called “general” consumer research—meaning research that wasn’t focused on optimizing a specific piece of execution or against a very precise business question. I agreed with him from the perspective of always needing clear research objectives and actions to be taken, but thought only doing research against specific products or projects was a bit short-sighted. He certainly wasn’t the only person in my career who preferred to turn to market research only to answer a specific project question, but that’s kind of like taking a single drinking glass to the well every time you’re thirsty. Before going further, let me take a minute to define “foundational research” so we’re all on the same page. The scope of foundational research is across an entire industry, market, category or consumer group(s) and includes understanding things like: habits & practices, unmet needs, attitudes, beliefs and values, category drivers and motivations, consumer segmentation and profiling, and more. And now, I would like to offer 3 arguments in support of investing resources against foundational research in your organization. 1. Foundational research is a well of information you can draw from over and over again. A robust category fundamentals study can yield myriad analyses and reports for multiple business objectives and if conducted on a semi-regular basis can replace many other, smaller studies. I was once part designing a comprehensive global skin care category fundamentals study, which was expensive and time consuming, but we put a rigorous analysis plan in place in advance to extract every drop of learning from that research. As a result, from a single study, we derived multiple high-impact business analyses across multiple segments and even developed a new global consumer framework that had huge strategic impact. We went back to that same study over and over again for specific project questions, ultimately saving both time and money. Qualitative foundational research can also be a “giving tree” of learning, especially when you use ethnographic techniques and storytelling. Specifically, doing in-context interviews with your target consumer segments and observing them performing a task and the environment it happens in or tell you a story about how an interaction with a product or service impacted her life. For example, two segments might say feeding their family healthy food is important, but one takes you to a farmer’s market on a shop-a-long and the other goes straight to the packaged food aisle in her local grocery store. Understanding those two definitions of “healthy” in a tangible way can lead to distinct insights for both groups. These are images, observations and stories you can go back to again and again when designing a new product or marketing campaign or trying to sell a project to upper management or investors. 2. Foundational research helps identify issues and opportunities and where to focus. By deeply understanding your customers and what’s most important to them, you can get ahead of possible pitfalls and beat competition to the punch. If you identify an issue or opportunity in foundational research, you know where to dive deeper. For example, foundational research might reveal a disconnect in what you think your brand stands for and how customers perceive it, which might lead to a dedicated brand re-positioning project or new advertising campaign to address. Quantitative foundational research in particular can provide a broad picture of your market/category landscape to help shape and prioritize future research plans. Early in my career, I was working on a declining category within beauty products and our charge was to figure out why and how to reverse the trend. We did extensive qualitative research and coupled that with data from existing quantitative research as well as in-market results (sales/shares) to define distinct market segments, each with its own targeted marketing strategy and recommended product innovation pipeline. This foundational learning allowed senior management to make strategic positioning and investment choices that not only reversed the decline, but actually turned the product segment into a growth engine for the brand within a very short period. 3. Foundational research helps you develop deeper understanding of your customers so you can create on their behalf. For me, one of the primary objectives of foundational research, especially qualitative, is to get to know your target customer so well that you actually develop a gut level feel for what will resonate with him or her. This is of course important for running a current business, but absolutely essential for future innovation. Steve Jobs famously remarked, “Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” This, in a nutshell, is the objective of consumer research for innovation—not to ask customers what the answer is, but to deeply understand their needs, and empathize with them, so you can design a solution to delight them. If you take the time to lay a strong foundation of consumer understanding, it allows you to ultimately move faster by not having to research every small question along the way (ideally, the entire business core team would share in this learning to enable quicker consensus building). When I was working on an “aging in place” project focused on technology that would help keep seniors living independently longer, I had the opportunity to interview lots of seniors in their own homes, in community centers, and in assisted living facilities. We did talk specifically about health and technology, but just as importantly, I also got to hear their personal stories and understand what was most important to them in their lives. We talked spoke with formal and informal caregivers (family, neighbors, etc.) to get a more holistic picture of their needs from multiple perspectives. It was that foundational understanding that that helped us define the requirements of an ideal product/service and evaluate multiple potential technology platforms. Laying a strong foundation is the first step in any building project, including brands and companies. Investing in foundational research up front can provide a valuable resource for current and future business questions, a clear picture of the most important issues and opportunities to focus on, and a deep understanding of your customers so you can design to delight them. Almost every company does some kind of market research, which can range from the most basic email customer satisfaction survey to massive global studies with half million dollar price tags. But no matter the budget or the scope, the sad truth is that a large percentage of consumer and market research is vastly underutilized within most companies. I’ve heard more stories than I can tell—studies commissioned by one person that their successor never even glanced at, stacks of dusty research reports that no one has any idea what they contain, research conducted for a specific objective and the rest of the learning ignored. You get the idea. The fact is that the majority of companies have an untapped asset in their already conducted or purchased consumer and market research studies. There may be missing links between qualitative, quantitative and syndicated research. There may be a lot of great consumer research data, but it hasn’t been adequately translated to conclusions and recommendations for the business. There may be research in one part of the organization with broader application that no one else even knows exists. And sometimes organizations just don’t know what they don’t know. Whatever the specific situation, there is something that can help—an insight audit. An insight audit involves reviewing existing consumer research learning for a few different objectives: 1) to glean new insights for a new project or objective from existing data, especially across multiple sources 2) to translate data into action by connecting the dots to develop actionable conclusions and recommendations for the business, and 3) to shape future research efforts by identifying what’s already known and where the gaps in knowledge are to develop a new learning plan. One example from personal experience involves consumer targeting for a personal care category. In a nutshell, the brand desperately needed to update their consumer targeting strategy, but didn’t have the time or funds to commission a new, dedicated segmentation study. They did, however, have access to some relevant existing research, including: an outdated category-specific quantitative study, a recent cross-category quantitative study (not specific to this market segment), point-of-sale/market data, and some relevant qualitative research. Via extensive mining of those sources, including quantitative analysis and qualitative insights, as well as understanding the current market structure (e.g. versioning and competitive product offerings), several robust “prime prospect” consumer groups were identified which filled the immediate business need. In another situation, a pet care company wanted to test concepts for a brand restage and instead of doing new qualitative research, they were able to hire an external consultant to mine their existing qualitative research as well as seeking out key trends and consumer language from secondary/unstructured data found online. In this case, the addition of online unstructured data (from blogs, forums, product reviews, etc.) helped identify new areas of consumer frustration and unmet needs in the category. With this more cost and time effective option, they developed several compelling positioning concepts for their restage that really resonated with consumers and it turns out that one of the new concepts developed by the consultant, based on the insights found in the research as well as market trends, was the winning idea. Much like a financial audit, often the best person to conduct an insight audit is external to the organization. He or she should have deep expertise in a full range of consumer research techniques, the ability to synthesize large amounts of information into clear, concise and actionable insights, and extensive client-side experience for the application of those insights to the business. In one last example, a company was struggling with a major strategic decision and they had reams of consumer studies, but were unable to reconcile all disparate pieces of data and really come to a clear conclusion. A consultant was able to pull out several key findings from the reports they already had, including 100+ slide brand equity studies, and combine those with actual in-market results to paint a clear and cohesive picture of the market reality and therefore, this company’s opportunity space, allowing them to choose the path forward with confidence. Sometimes it really is difficult to see the forest for the trees! To sum up, the key benefits of an insight audit are: as a way to establish what is already known and where there are gaps in knowledge/where new research is needed; as a cost-effective way to gather baseline knowledge and relevant insights for a new project; and finally, as a way to extract the full benefit of every piece of research, and across studies, by translating the data into actionable conclusions and recommendations for the business. Not only will an insight audit maximize the value of a company’s existing research investment, but it will also result in future research cost savings, which can easily cover the cost of the audit itself. |
AuthorSarah Faulkner, Owner Faulkner Insights Archives
July 2021
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